MASTER IN MINUTES: MELEE TIPS

MASTER IN MINUTES: MELEE TIPS INTRO

Welcome to our Master in Minutes course for Melee DPS. Playing a melee is more frustrating than ever these days.

By no definition is it an easy role to play. There are countless traps you could fall into, whether it's positioning or getting kited on your burst.

It's frustrating, but we are here to fix it. If you have a burning question, we probably have the answer for you and there is something to learn for every skill level.

So stay tuned because this course will teach you all of the advanced tips and tricks you need to know as a melee DPS.

DO NOT GET KITED ON YOUR BURST

How many times have you been seconds away from winning a game with all your burst ready and your target completely out of defenses only to see them slip away faster than your hopes and dreams?

There's probably no worse feeling than using all your burst and being completely denied without even being able to connect to your target. That's why having a good usage of your mobility and gap closers is so important as a melee.

Now with all that said, are you still not convinced? Well, let's watch this arena game, but we'll pretend that we're in the enemy warrior's shoes.

He can clearly see that the warlock we're following doesn't have access to unending resolve, dark pact, or health stone. A defenseless cloth wearer in the middle of the map?

He's probably super dead. Am I right?

Well, the warrior even has avatar ready too. I mean, this is definitely a checkmate situation.

Or is it? What the warrior fails to consider is the warlock's mobility.

The lock is quick to escape the burst with teleport and gateway ready, while the warrior didn't have heroic leap and charge to stick to his target, essentially wasting his cooldowns and dropping the kill window.

To avoid this situation, you need to follow the golden rule of melee, which is to always try to use your mobility second. Let your enemy use their mobility to their advantage.

If you're not sure what to do, then you can use your mobility to their advantage. If you're not sure what to do, then you can use your mobility to their advantage. their distance creators first, and then utilize your gap closers as a response.

Some melee fall behind on mobility in the early stages of the game, wasting things like charge, death grip, or divine steed just to connect onto the target, when instead, they could've just mounted towards them.

If instead, you let your opponents act first, you can instantly reconnect, which is vital for having maximum damage, especially during your burst windows.

SAVE AND USE MOBILITY TO SURVIVE WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE DEFENSIVES

Having issues dealing with inconsistent solo shuffle healers? Overlapping defensives with your team?

Having to deal with ultra meta specs that seem to do unrelenting damage? Well, if you answered yes to any of these questions and are struggling to survive as a melee, then this video is for you.

Most people have the idea in mind that a melee class should never flee from a fight, and that every use of their mobility should be aggressive in order to stay on target. But that couldn't be further from the truth.

In fact, most melee specializations have good ways to part ways from a fight and use their mobility as a defensive strategy. Feral druids, for example, can shapeshift every route or slows in the game.

They have wild charge, dash, and stampeding roar to disengage from the fight into the safety of line of sight or straight ranging the enemies until they recover defensively. Rogues can always shadow step back to their healer and go behind a pillar or even use sprint for the same goal.

It could be argued that Windwalkers have the best defensive mobility toolkit, being able to roll, port, tiger's lust, and flying serpent kick to completely avoid damage. In any case, every melee in the game has the potential to kite away using their mobility, and making this play can be game-changing.

When you're completely out of defensives or when your healer is stuck in CC with nothing to save you, your mobility is like an extra defensive. It can either be used as a last resource, or as a way to hold on to your bigger cooldowns.

Once you realize this, then suddenly, surviving becomes way easier and situations where you would normally just die become your new kiting playground.

WHEN CHASING KEEP YOUR HEALER’S POSITIONING IN MIND

The solo shuffle gate is about to open and someone on your team has already called a target, so now it's time to chase them the entire game, right?

Now, although this strategy may help you reach certain raiding milestones, you'll inevitably hit a brick wall when facing the more experienced players that are better at luring you into vulnerable positions out of line of sight of your healer. Okay, so skill capped is just telling me to never chase targets again, right?

Well, no. But before deciding whether or not to chase, we need to ask ourselves two questions.

Number one, are my teammates on the same page as me? We can't stress enough that going on a solo crusade is not the winning play in ranked PvP, even in solo shuffle.

Therefore, any decision that you make has to be a team call. Now, in the case of solo shuffle, you should be watching your teammates to check to see who they're hitting.

If it's clear they want to attack someone else, sometimes you have no choice but to swap. Secondly, before chasing a target across the map, you need to ask if it's worth it.

Are you even in a position to force a CD or score a kill? Now, generally, when you want to chase someone to the edges of the map, you sacrifice your team's positioning in the process.

Because of this, you need to think of the value of pursuing the target if it means you might need to trade a defensive in the process. Now, ideally, you should push down the target, but if you don't, you'll have to think about the value of pursuing the target.

Now, deep into the enemy team only when working towards a kill or when trying to force major CDs. If both of these conditions are met, then you should definitely chase.

If only one is met, you could be taking a gamble. But never forget to always be on the lookout for your healer's positioning.

As a melee player, you have to be constantly aware of their location as your survivability and overall PvP success depend on it. You can do this with raid markers or even with friendly nameplates.

If you're a melee player, you have to be constantly aware of their location as well. By being aware of your healer's positioning, you can make better decisions.

USE DEFENSIVES TO STAY AGGRESSIVE

The best defense is a good offense. Now, while this saying is hundreds of years old, it still applies to WoW PvP.

Being aggressive and putting heavy pressure on the enemy team has consistently been proven to be the best way to deny the enemy team from developing any momentum. And being in the driver's seat can ease every single aspect of the game.

Healing becomes much easier, getting CC done is less risky, and even dealing damage is more effective as enemies tend to group up when they're falling behind, leading to easy cleave scenarios.

But what people don't teach you is that to keep the aggressive tempo going in your team's favor, some concessions have to be made, and the most common case is trading defensives in order to stay aggressive. This is especially true for melee, since you need to be pushed in order to stay aggressive.

Take this game for example. Here we're following a death knight playing with a BM hunter on his team.

After controlling the pace of the match by forcing both dispersion and life cocoon, watch how the DK chooses to trade both his icebound fortitude on the stun and his anti-magic shell offensively to keep harassing the enemy team. This gives him enough bulk to stay in the fight and force life swap.

When you pop in, you can see that the DK is now in the lead, and the enemy team is now in the lead. If you're playing any defensive, your first thought shouldn't be, okay, now I need to pull back.

No, you have to use your bulk to stay in. This even applies to the squishiest melees, like rogues and windwalker mocks.

With Touch of Karma, not only do you get extra bulk, but you're also dealing extra damage, which means you get rewarded offensively for a defensive trade.

KITE TO ENEMY HEALER

Let's pretend you're playing against a melee cleave. To your horror, you are the enemy target.

And now you have a choice to make. Will you be a true melee player and brawl in the middle of the map like a classic macho melee showdown?

Or do you play smart and be, well, boring? Even though no one likes being the target, this situation gives you more control over the outcome of the game.

So what's the benefit of being the target, you might ask? The short answer is that you get to decide where the fight will happen.

Now you have two options. Here's option one.

You can feel scared and you can move back to the safety of your starting room, closer to your healer and bring in the action back to your partners.

Or option two, where the brave smork inside of you tells you to push up, slowly moving towards enemy territory, bringing the fight to the enemy healer and further away from yours.

Even though our first instinct is to always pick number one and retreat to our healer, it is exactly this mentality that loses the melee cleave mirror. By kiting to our healer, we're not only giving up map control, but even more detrimentally, we're making our healer's life exceptionally more difficult.

With melee in their face, dealing with short range interrupts and CCs becomes way harder. And even worse, your healer becomes a potential swap target.

This is why Arena as a melee cleave is a major goal in this game. This is why Arena as a melee cleave is a major goal in this game.

This is why Arena as a melee cleave is a major goal in this game. as a melee can sometimes feel backwards because your instinct to play safe puts you in more danger. Now, the good part is this is an easy fix.

Every time you're being targeted down by other melee, you should always try to bring the fight to the enemy healer, kiting your way to them while being sure not to line a site or out of range of our own healer.

Essentially, this gives our team more control over the game, making our decision-making a lot easier and making the game more predictable. Not only that, but in this case, we'll be the ones putting pressure on the enemy healer, threatening them with kicks, CC, or even swaps.

TAB TARGETTING ON DEFENSIVES

Does it ever feel like you're doing your rotation perfectly, but your damage output still feels low? Does it feel like no matter how much damage you deal, people are still able to survive?

If the answer to those questions are both yes, it could be the fact that you're doing too much damage into enemy defensive cooldowns.

There are multiple damage reduction cooldowns available for every spec, and if you're looking to optimize your pressure and your damage output, hitting a target that's taken 20% to 50% less damage is far from ideal, right? Now, this isn't rocket science.

It's just basic math.

Now, while there are cases where you should definitely power through a damage reduction that's used late with a target already at low HP, in most situations, swapping off that target while their cooldown is up and targeting someone else is the optimal way to deal damage as a melee, especially if you're doing a melee.

Especially if you're doing a melee. Especially if you're doing a melee.

Take this arena, for instance, following a Rett paladin. While his main target was the enemy Arms Warrior, he was quick to swap as soon as he saw Die by the Sword being used.

With a quick tab to the Holy Paladin that was stunned nearby, our Rett was able to force out Divine Protection. This then leads him to tab again to the enemy Monk, since they're now the only one who will take full damage.

Now we've forced two major defensives from just tabbing when a damage reduction cooldown, and now we can see that the damage reduction cooldown was up. The idea is simple.

By swapping on defensives, you're able to deal more damage and force even more cooldowns than if you were to simply train one target. This makes the enemy healer's life more difficult and opens up more kill opportunities for you in the future.

ABUSE YOUR SLOWS

Let's talk about an underappreciated ability that pretty much every melee DPS has access to. It doesn't deal damage though, it doesn't look flashy, and you might think it doesn't even matter.

Despite being weak on paper though, it is one of the best spells in your toolkit. Well, if you haven't guessed it yet, yes, we're talking about slows.

Keeping enemies constantly slowed makes it easier for everyone on your team. What people tend to overlook is that slows are directly correlated with sticking to your target, which translates to being able to deal even more damage.

By keeping players slowed, you can sometimes force out their mobility cooldowns, which is what you want to make your opponents use their mobility first. Want to see how a game without slows looks like?

Focus on the fact that as soon as the warrior connects to the warlock, they don't even press hamstring. By making this mistake, he's forced to spend his last charge to get back to the battlefield.

He can't even get back on target during his cooldown window, which leaves him completely out of mobility to get back on target. While keeping players slowed does help your damage, don't overlook how much it helps your teammates.

Picture yourself in your healer's shoes, watching an enemy paladin pushing in to hodge or blind. This situation is much easier to play around if the pally is walking at 30% movement speed.

Even when it feels like you can't do anything to peel, sometimes the best thing you can do is simply apply a snare. If you're not sure what to do, just use a skill.

In most cases, it's a free global and is way less committal and equally as effective as a stun or micro CC.

USE OFFENSIVE CDS INTO A STUNNED TARGET

By now, you've probably noticed that most arena games tend to end when offensive cooldowns are pressed. Now, this isn't news to anyone, as some CDs can quadruple damage output.

But here's the thing. Even though your offensives make you a killing machine, all it takes is a single defensive cooldown to completely deny your damage.

This is why, at the very least, you should aim to only pop offensives into stunned targets. Most classes can't use defensives in a stun, which means they're like sitting ducks taking full damage from you while incapable of running away or countering your attacks.

Ranged classes have the luxury of being able to burst whenever, but for us melee, adding even the smallest amount of lockdown significantly enhances our kill potential. This is not even up for debate, especially since every melee in the game has access to at least one stun in their toolkit.

This could be the iconic Kidney, or even a more unusual combo of Sundering into Capacitor Totem for Enhancement Shamans. In any case, combining burst with stuns is one of the best things you can do to improve your gameplay.

Look here at how the Retribution Paladin we're following instantly pops his wings as soon as his Demon Hunter teammate stuns the enemy Hunter. And even moments later, they opt for a DR follow-up Chaos Nova to keep the pressure rolling during their cooldown windows.

NO DEAD GLOBALS

Have you ever wondered why Gladiator players on average deal 20% more damage than players at Rival? Maybe their rotation's slightly better, but there's one overlooked explanation.

It's dead Globals. When we review clips from players below Rival, we notice more gaps between spells that are being pressed.

Instead of using Globals constantly, there are these tiny gaps between abilities. Over time, this can compile into multiple missed opportunities to deal damage, which can easily snowball into 20% lost damage.

At a fundamental level, this can be caused by not understanding the concept of builders and spenders. As a rule of thumb, you want to be building resources constantly in order to dump damage in bigger waves.

Every spec has a builder and spender system. If you're holding onto damage Globals for too long, then you aren't building as fast as you can be.

This is especially true when we see an inexperienced player chasing a target. We need you to develop a mentality that every point of damage matters, no matter who or even what it is on.

You could be destroying totems on your way to your target, hitting a pet, or ideally hitting a different player on your way to your primary target. Nonetheless, every point of damage counts, since it requires healing from the enemy team.

Now with that in mind, the golden rule for melee is to never stop attacking, while using as many Globals as you can, even using utility during dead periods in your rotation. This could mean off-healing if you're playing a hybrid, or interrupting a cast, or even reapplying slows.

Never waste your GCDs.

PLAY AROUND YOUR DPS

Maybe you're a bloodthirsty melee Chad that loves cleaving down the enemy team. Or maybe you're a tactician who loves setting up kills with surgical precision.

The fact is, regardless of your preference, in the ranked solo shuffle environment, you need to be ready to adapt to the composition you're given, which means playing around your partner. To start off, let's go over some general tips when you're paired up with another melee.

Firstly, the crucial point is to always be on the same page as your teammate, trying to maximize pressure by hitting the same target. Now, let's see this in practice.

Here we're following a Fury Warrior playing with an Assassination Rogue. Note how they were pressuring the enemy Mage together and by using another golden rule of PvP that we've discussed extensively here at Skillcapped, swapping on defensives.

Here we can see the Warrior swapping off the Mage that just received Ironbark and start hitting the enemy Resto Druid. This quick maneuver was enough to also force the enemy Resto Druid to use Bark Skin.

In doing so, the Rogue noticed a big win condition of swapping to the enemy healer, who currently didn't have access to Trinket, Ironbark, or Bark Skin. However, the key here was the Warrior playing around his teammate and realizing the swap was happening.

By acting as a team, they were able to easily close out the game. Another rule for double melee and solo shuffle is to avoid overlapping or wasting your stuns.

As every melee has access to at least one stun, it's important to make the most of it. We highly recommend crossing your stuns with one on your target and the other on the enemy healer.

But how can you do this without communication, you might be asking? There are some melee that always wanna stun the kill target, like Rogues or Wind Walker Monks, for example.

In these cases, you should let them use their stun on the kill target while instantly using yours on the enemy healer. You can also see if your partner wants to stun the healer by tracking their movement.

If they're a red paladin sprinting at the enemy healer, you should assume that they wanna Hodge or Blind, which means you should be ready to stun the kill target. But what if you're paired with a ranged specialization?

In that case, you should always look for windows of opportunity where your partner is CCing the enemy healer to cross your stun, and you can also do so by using your skills. This will allow you to quickly get the kill target into the kill target.

By cross controlling the enemy team, you can further complicate their cooldown trades, potentially forcing overlaps in their CDs. Moreover, they'll also be sitting ducks for your damage.

Not convinced? Let's watch it happen.

Once again, we're following a Fury Warrior, this time paired up with a marksmanship hunter. Pay attention to how he recognizes his teammate land a full trap on the enemy healer, and by simply paying attention to what his partner was doing and syncing CC together, multiple cooldowns were forced.

Always be on the watch to play around your DPS teammate and make the most of combined pressure. And in case of a non-proactive partner, you should always take the initiative and start the offensive push yourself.

BE DISRUPTIVE

Although Twitch chat would probably disagree with us, being a melee DPS is not just about dealing damage. In fact, being disruptive and denying the enemy's plans can be just as decisive in winning games as topping the damage charts.

Being disruptive includes a wide array of game-changing plays, ranging from interrupting crucial damage and crowd control casts to stunning a target's offensive push.

Even more niche plays, like death gripping a player away from your teammate or pressing disarm at the right time, are some of the ways that you can be disruptive.

Making good use of your interrupts, utility, and crowd control make you a nuisance for the enemy team, and top-level melee play like the most annoying people on the planet.

In fact, the concept of denying the enemy win conditions is also referred to as a play-to-not-lose mentality, and it's the most common strategy used at the tournament level. Take this small clip of a great disruptive play in action.

By now, we all know how deadly demonic tyrant casts from Demonology Warlocks can be. This crucial burst summon is one of the specialization's main win conditions, but is on an awkward 90-second cooldown.

But do you know what else has the exact same CD? You guessed it right, Intimidating Shout.

The warrior here instantly fears the Warlock's tyrant, acting as a one-to-one target. The Warlock's attack is a very powerful attack, and it's a very powerful attack against the enemy.

It's a very powerful attack against both the enemy and the opponent. But we don't know what else has the exact same CD.

You need to think of the game from an anti-fun perspective. Do you see a red paladin popping wings?

You know it's a one-minute CD. Do you know what else is a one-minute CD?

Virtually every disarm effect in the game. Your disruption applies to more than just interrupts.

Instead, it's how you use your entire kit to deny the enemy team's momentum at all times.